Iran's Plan to Lure Big Oil

Far away from the bloody Syrian conflict and continuing rancor of the Iran nuclear deal, influential policymakers in Tehran are debating the future of the country’s energy resources. They know Iran needs vastly increased foreign investment to revive its ailing economy after years of international sanctions and economic isolation.

President Hassan Rouhani and his oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, have come up with a master plan to reverse decades of indifference from Western majors. But the question for them, and the giant global oil companies they want to entice, is whether pressure from Tehran's hardliners and potential blowback from the U.S. government will make investing in Iran's oil fields too risky a bet for foreigners to undertake.